Issues for applying instant messaging to smart home systems

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that instant messaging is suitable for smart home systems. We classify smart home services into three groups - standalone, simple co-work, and workflow -, identify requirements, and show why instant messaging is suitable for these services. Furthermore, we address three issues for applying instant messaging to smart home services: architecture, user interface, and message protocol. We adopt a combination of the peer-to-peer architecture for the internet-wide services and the centralized client-server architecture in the house. We propose an interpreter-based GUI for user interface of clients, and XML format for the communication message on the top of XMPP. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.